


Smell

by secretagentfan



Series: Twitter Warm-up Drabbles [1]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Drabble, M/M, idiots being idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretagentfan/pseuds/secretagentfan
Summary: Post-canon / Zelos companionLloyd and Zelos are two halves of a whole moron.
Relationships: Lloyd Irving/Zelos Wilder
Series: Twitter Warm-up Drabbles [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971880
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Smell

**Author's Note:**

> Starting a collection of twitter drabbles. Debated making these a collection because they'll be short but fuck it. 
> 
> : ) Starting off with some Zelloyd for Flaaamby.

“Hey Zelos,” Lloyd commented one afternoon, spread out on a ratty inn bedspread somewhere just outside of the Triet desert. This particular inn was extra terrible, but Lloyd kind of liked it, mainly because they didn’t visit it once during their Journey-of-Regeneration-But-Not. New places were pretty rare now. Lloyd wasn’t sure what he expected, but Journey-Part-Two had wound up being more _Hey Didn’t We Already Go Here: The Epic_ rather than the exsphere-collecting emotional ride he dreamed of.

Zelos made it bearable. He kept things interesting. Case and point: the man in question was currently using his sword to peel an orange. Lloyd preferred to use his nails for that sort of thing but Zelos was doing his Zelos thing. Lloyd wasn’t going to be a Genis about it and try to correct him.

His ass was on Lloyd’s bed, somewhere near Lloyd’s right thigh. He had a crappy bed of his own a few feet away across the room, but he always found a way to Lloyd’s. It was fine; Lloyd kind of liked him here. The pink, red, and white of Zelos always looked out of place in rundown inns like this, and it was always kind of satisfying to see him relaxing somewhere he didn’t seem to belong.

_Huh_ , Lloyd thought, staring. Zelos almost seemed to belong _more_ in the areas he _didn’t belong_. Zelos always looked extra stupid in places he was designed for. In Meltokio, sure, Zelos was dressed for the part– but his face ruined the whole thing. It was his eyes mainly: glinting like the kind of over-polished stones kids bought for cheap in a rock show. Lloyd always hated those. Why smooth the rough part of the rock? Who cared _only_ about the shiny inside? It was only cool because it was surrounded by rocky stuff. You had to have both.

“Man,” Lloyd said. “Fuck Meltokio.”

Zelos was obnoxious, but he wasn’t obnoxious enough for that place. Not always, anyway.

“Sure,” Zelos mumbled, half-listening. He was apparently quite invested in his weird orange peeling. Did he even know how it was normally done? Was this a rich-person thing? A Tethe’alla Chosen thing? Did people peel oranges for Zelos usually? Lloyd sighed, train of thought gone. He had already forgotten what he set out to say in the first place.

Zelos rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: you’re bored.”

His voice was dry and casual in a way that Lloyd once tried to describe to Colette but she really couldn’t get. She claimed it must’ve been a rare-Zelos voice, but Lloyd heard it all the time, so Colette must have not been listening for it. It usually came out when Zelos was really, genuinely pissed off, or just futzing around talking to Lloyd, like now.

“Nah,” Lloyd said. He tried to place this particular brand of Zelos’s voice and categorize it. Frustrated? No. Honest? Yeah, honest sounded right. He sat up swiftly, shoulder brushing Zelos’s back.

“Warn a guy, bud,” Zelos mumbled, inching over a bit, but resting his elbow on Lloyd’s shoulder. “I just fixed my hair, and you’re about to ruin it again.”

“Monsters will do that better than I can,” Lloyd countered. Sniffed the air. Blinked. “You stink.”

Zelos’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”

Lloyd sat up straighter, grabbed Zelos’s arm and sniffed it once. Yeah, he definitely stank. Zelos’s arm smelled kind of like Dirk’s house in the fall. They were always overloaded with oddball commissions, and straw and sawdust were everywhere from filling scarecrows. There was the slightest hint sweetness there too: the last dregs of the summer flowers, still clinging to life.

“Like cheap wood and flowers,” Lloyd said.

Zelos slowly, slowly turned his head. “Please tell me in your podunk little world you had cologne.”

Lloyd stared, blank. “Well, that podunk little world is one half of the big world now.”

“Cologne.”

“Nope.”

Zelos shut his eyes. “I wear it all the time, you really never noticed?”

“You stink like this all the time?”

“It’s—” Zelos began, then just looked at Lloyd in a baffled-yet-smug way that screamed: _I can’t believe you lived like this._

_Hey, you don’t see me cutting oranges with a sword,_ Lloyd thought, but decided to drop it. They had a whole new journey to survive, after all.

Lloyd would just have to get used to the smell.


End file.
